It is Good Again
by tatumtaylor
Summary: Katniss after Peeta suggests they have children, her thoughts and unraveling. One-shot, my first post. In a world where the Hunger Games for the children of politicians happened.


Having lived through the Games twice - or survived being the more suitable word - I was more than entitled to my fair share of fears and nightmares. However, I felt an intense resentment towards the Capitol, even more so than before my name was drawn from the Reaping bowl, because every one of these fears, of these weaknesses, had been Capitol bred. They had stripped me of the one thing I was most proud of - my strength.

They knew this, certainly. They knew that I had been at their disposal. I had come out of the Games alive, a feat that one thousand, seven hundred and nineteen others had not achieved, and had therefore bared witness to the immense power the Capitol had possessed over me. Over everyone. So powerful, in fact, that I still woke in the dead of night to the sound of myself screaming and bathed in my own cold sweat, dreading the moment in which I would succumb into sleeps tendrils, where I was certain a new nightmare - one about one of the many lives that had been lost at my hands, by my doing - lay in wait.

This is why, when Peeta suggests we bring a child into this world, I find myself sprinting towards the woods, bare of his secure arms that had enveloped me in his warmth only moments ago.

He of all people should know the danger his preposition poses. Children can be swept into the arms of death at a moments notice, can be sentenced to whatever a more powerful being feels fit, like the Hunger Games. Although they have been ruled out completely, the threat that something similar to them could so easily exist if a tiny slip in politics were to occur, make me unwilling to even consider creating something that could so simply be taken away from me.

Even those who were so above the rules, like President Snow, could have everything stripped from them in a millisecond. Although he was dead by the time, his own grand daughter was forced to compete in the districts' sadistic, yet somewhat merciful version of the Games, the last of it's kind. So many more children had died during those Games. The unprepared, weak Capitol children who had not even the faintest idea of what being hungry felt like, were left in an arena to fight to the death. There had not even been a Victor. They had all died, either at the hands of each other, or of nature, when starvation or dehydration made their way into the arena. When the last tribute, the supposed Victor, had been announced, he had dropped dead before the announcer could even finish her sentence.

It had not been like the usual Games, where twenty four children found themselves at the mercy of their surroundings. No. it had been every child between the ages of 12 and 18 that had the misfortune to appear on the same bloodline as a high up politician. Eighty-nine of them had been thrown into the arena, and most of them had died slow, natural deaths, many of the Capitol children unable to even pick up an ax, let alone throw it into a competitors chest.

All of this had been my doing. If I had said no, if I had voted against the entire idea in the first place, Haymitch would have been on my side and the entire thing would not even have taken place. If only I had the heart that Peeta always showed, even so recently after his hijacking, i would have eighty-nine less deaths weighing down my guilty conscience. Instead, I went for the low-blow and decided the fate of the children who didn't even play a part in the initial success of the Hunger Games. Children who were more or less the same age as me, or as Prim had been. Snow's granddaughter had fallen into the latter category, and her uncanny resemblance to my sister - with her blonde hair and small stature - had sent me spiraling into a month long depression all over again. I had to continuously remind myself that she was not Prim, that Prim had died doing something she loved, she died helping someone else.

But that only brought on other thoughts, like the constant tugging at my brain insisting that it was Gale, that it was Gale's design and therefore partly his fault that she was dead. It had been times like that that had made me glad he had moved to district 2, making me unable to see his face and feel the anger and hatred towards him that I tried so desperately not to feel.

Now though, as I sit in the woods, rethinking everything bad I have ever done in my life and undo the months of progress I had made in getting better, he is the one I wish was here with me. The way we had been before the Capitol had ruined everything. My best friend. That we were just hunting, and I was listening to him rant about how wrong the Capitol was, scaring off game, just getting everything out of his system.

I wonder what he does with his time now, now that food is so easily attainable and the object of his loathing has been turned into something good by President Paylor. It has been three years now. He has probably found someone he loves. Maybe even thinking of settling down. Maybe he already has.

I find myself not caring.

This surprises me, to say the least. Yes, I miss him. I miss him a lot. But I had thought that after all we had been through, I would at least feel a little jealous at the life he was so surely living with his new girl. And I know that this has something to do with Peeta. He has filled a void in me I had thought was impossible to fill. He has made me feel something I thought what a weakness to feel. I knew that I loved him, I had even told him so, but I had not been able to pin point the exact degree to which my love extended. I see now that it is beyond what I thought I was capable, after all the love I'd lost.

I am unworthy of his love, yes. I always have been. I have played him for a fool, I have abandoned him in his time of need, and I had abandoned him now, when he had just told me he thought I was capable of love, to care enough to be a mother.

I know that I am not ready now. But I will be in the future, I know it. I know that I have Peeta, and he has me. That together, we can get through anything, as we have already proven.

At this revelation, I stand, suddenly urgent to see him, to encase him in my arms and tell him I'm sorry. that I love him, I love him, I love him.

I rise from my make shift seat of a pile of leaves on the damp forest floor, wipe my face of the tears that had been shed, and find myself sprinting toward the point where I had, not so long ago, run away from.

When he sees me, the worry on his face alleviates, and he holds his arms out for me to run into, not caring that a while ago I had forced myself out of them.

As soon as my body slams into his, I do the same with our lips.

"I'm sorry," I murmur into his mouth. The words "I love you," find themselves pouring out of my mouth and into his. At this, he pulls away and looks at me with concern.

"Katniss, I know that you think you can't do it. But everything is over. There is nothing left to take anything we love away. You deserve this Katniss. You deserve unselfish, unconditional love. And you deserve to return it."

"I already do," I whisper. "I love you like that."

My voice breaks as I say this. On every word. My mouth is not used to spilling confessions of this manner. But I need Peeta to know. I need him to know what he has done for me, how he has saved me. He is constantly reminding me of all the times I have saved him, and I have never realized just how much he has done the same for me. He is my stability. He is my sanity. I tell him all of this, and he pulls me into a warm embrace. I breathe him in. He smells of cinnamon. He smells of home.

"I won't bring it up again," he promises.

"It's not that I don't ever want kids. I'm just not ready.."

He nods, understanding.

"Give it a few years?" I ask.

"We have all the time in the world," he promises, before kissing me softly on my forehead.

And he does wait. He waits until I feel absolutely certain I am ready, 15 years later. Even then, though, I find myself with a fear in my stomach, round about the same place where she rests inside of me. As Peeta promised, he is right there, guiding me through the nightmares I still get. After she is born, I feel a joy inside of me which is almost impossible to tame.

"Life can be good again," I remind myself. "Life is good again."


End file.
